After Effects 2018 CC - composition preview doesn't show anything

[xSchubert]

Hello,

I usually create something in Illustrator and import it to After Effects. Unfortunately, I've been unable to use After Effects for a while now, because my composition preview doesn't work. My composition simply doesn't show. I am, however, able to animate something and export it - and it works fine. I just can't see what I'm animating. In my "Info"-tab (right side of the video below) does register my composition (colours, position etc.).

I've tried to reinstall the program, I've tried playing around with the preview-settings (in the bottom of the preview-display), but nothing has helped. Any ideas?

My specs are as follows:

MSI GS43VR Phantom Pro

Windows 10 Pro 64-bit (10.0, build 15063)

16 GB DDR4 RAM - 2400 MHz

Core i7 - 2.8 ghz

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (6 GB)

256 GB SSD & 1 TB HDD

Let me know if you need any other information from me, and thanks! 🙂

Screenshots:

[Mike_Abbott]

Left field suggestion.... check to see if you have any windows display scaling set at the system level - if so see what happens if you set display scaling to 100%

[xSchubert]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for your answer!

Is this the scaling you're refering to (see image - it's in Danish, but should look like other Windows 10 otherwise)

In that case, it was already set to 100% on both screens (as was recommended by Windows).

On an extra note: I have a setup with a USB-dock that expands my work-space to an external monitor. However, the issues still persist even if I unplug the USB-dock.

Any other suggestions?

Cheers!

[Rameez_Khan]

Hi xSchubert,

Thanks for providing the video and the screenshot!

Does this happen with other types of media too or just Illustrator files?

Try this:

Switch the Video Renderer to Mercury Playback Acceleration or Mercury Software Only under File > Project Settings...

Let us know if that helps!

Rameez

[xSchubert]

Hi Rameez,

Thanks for your answer 🙂

My project settings was already on Mercury GPU Acceleration (CUDA), but I also tried Mercury Software Only. Neither worked.

I tried importing .PNG, .PDF and .MPEG into my project, but the same problem happened. I could see the colours of all the imported file in the right side of AE (as in the video), but nothing in the preview-window.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks,

Morten

[Mike_Abbott]

Morten,

A few further thoughts:

1. It's worth checking you have the latest Nvidia drivers for your card.

2. I can see your comp above is not using 3D space, but it might be worth checking: Composition > Composition settings > 3D renderer tab and checking what renderer you have selected. Ray trace is not recommended, classic or Cinema should be fine.

3. If you open Ae and just create a new comp with a black background, does that empty comp show up - what about if you toggle the transparency grid (just to the left of the active camera menu)?

4. Have you tried resetting your prefs. Immediately on launch of AE hold down Ctrl, Alt and Shift. You'll get a small dialog asking f you want to reset your prefs. click OK. Obviously the downside to this is that it will reset all program prefs to default.

[xSchubert]

Hi Mike

Thank you for your suggestions.

1. According to Nvidia Geforce Experience, I have the latest available driver for my graphics card.

2. I tried swithing my 3D renderer tab to CINEMA 4D. It was already on Classic 3D. I also tried Ray-Traced 3D, but nothing worked. I switched it back to Classic 3D.

3. I created a new composition with a black background, and it does show up - sort of... I'll try to explain it best I can.

The composition window doesn't update all the time. This means, that elements from whatever was previously in the composition area is shown, even when something else should be there instead. Look at the image below. The "play", "forward", etc. buttons are still there, even tho the elements aren't functional (marked with red circle). Their graphic is shown, but I can't click on them.

Also, nothing happens when I toggle the transparancy grid.

4. I am unable to reset my preferences using your specified method, but I have already reinstalled the program before.

Thanks for your suggestions!

/Morten

[Rameez_Khan]

Hi Morten,

Thanks for the screenshots!

It might be worth a try to switch to a different workspace. Change the workspace to Default or any other workspace.

Let us know if that helps.

Rameez

[xSchubert]

Hi Rameez

Would you be able to show me how to change the workspace to default? I'm having trouble finding it.

Thanks!

/Morten

[Mike_Abbott]

windows menu > workspace >

near the bottom of the sub menu is reset [name of workspace] to saved layout

[xSchubert]

Hi Mike

Thanks, I tried switching it. Did not work, unfortunately.

This is getting really weird. Any other suggestions?

/MS

[pkoneoneone]

Whenever I have encountered blank screens in the past, it is due to not enough RAM.

I have found CC 2017 and CC 2018 preview frequently goes blank and/or does not update. It seems like  that could be a RAM issue but CC 2014 works fine. (MBP Retina 16 G)

In general as a very long time AE user I find CC 2017 and so far CC 2018 (only used it for a day or two) to be  problematic.  I don't think they are really ready for pro use. CC 2017 (possibly a plug-in compatibility) crashes and takes down my whole machine. Again, CC 2014 works fine.

You might revert to CC 2014. Be careful to make sure you uncheck "delete old versions" somewhere in the CC app.

Thanks,

Paul

[xSchubert]

Hi Paul,

This might be the right solution, although I don't see why RAM would be a problem with my current machine. I might try reverting. Thank you for your answer!

/Morten

[Liamvasik]

Hi Morten!

from this morning at 10 am I am having exactly the same problems. No preview on After Effetcs or Premiere Pro.

I Didn't found yet any sollution for this. (all the previous steps didn't work for me.

Looks like any update or something is causing this issue; unfortunately I don`t have a restore point in Win10.

Any Ideas?

i7, 32GB, 1060 6 GB....6 minutes footage (around 120 clips)

Thank you.

Liam

[xSchubert]

Hi Liam

I've reinstalled my program on my computers other drive (HDD), due to limited space on my SSD. I think this may have fixed my issue. I'll return when I've tested it more; I haven't had time to test it out properly yet.

Cheers,

Morten.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Working now, xSchubert?

Thanks,
Kevin

[xSchubert · Accepted solution]

Hi Kevin and Liam,

Yes, After Effects seems to be working without problems after I reinstalled it on my HDD rather than my SSD. This may have been a solution due to only 30 GB of space on my SSD, whereas my HDD has almost 1TB. I'm not sure why this fixed my problem, but it did.

Thank you all for your help.

Cheers,

Morten.

[dagg66136449]

I'm having this same disaster and it's killing me. I was on the phone with Adobe AND NVidia all day last week. Am I correct that the only fix here is re-installing After Effects on an HDD instead of an SSD?

[xSchubert]

Hi.

Yes, mine worked after I reinstalled in onto another drive. It was originally installed on my laptops SSD, and I tried reinstalling on the SSD with no luck. But when I installed it on my HDD, it suddenly worked. I may have been a problem due to lack of space on the SSD, but I'm not completely sure.

[dagg66136449]

I have over 100gb free on my SSD. What driving me nuts is that support told me it was NVidia. I couldn't get the problem to manifest itself once they were on the hook, but the same thing is happening in Premiere where anything I bring in shows black if I use CUDA. Tomorrow is the last day I can turn something in before christmas and I have AE dying on me.

[xSchubert]

Does you AE have a popup saying that there's a lack in memory? 'Cause mine had that.
My computer also had NVidia, but updating the graphics did nothing for me.

[prwilliams64]

Sadly I'm suffering this problem all of a sudden. Strangely the preview comes back for a while, then goes again. There are no graphics driver updates from Dell for my machine. I'm basically unable to work at the moment.

[dagg66136449]

I did find a workaround (sort of) and also a culprit:

it started happening with comps overloaded with png's and some jpgs that I was animating. Once it died there was no way to consistently revive it. Opening a new project and pulling in the same pictures didn't work either, which wouldn't matter since I'd done SO much work already.

the workaround was this:

First purging- I purged from inside the job, then I went and deleted all the files (temporary/media/render) from the scratch disk.

Then I started with a new project and moved all the images to a new folder, imported the old project and opened it up and everything came back but the images were not online.

Now I did this also but I dunno if you want to do the amount of work it really was... I took images animated them in their own project and exported them as images sequences to use in comps. THE REASON i did this is because i remembered I'd had trouble with animating images in Final Cut years ago and I began to have suspicions that adding effects to an image in big comp might be doing something similar. So far this has worked for me.

[ksenia_chernishov]

Having the same issue, preview doesn't show no matter what i do and how i change the settings, 200 gb of disk space free. first occurred after the last update, but installing previous versions doesn't help(even CS6 doesn't show). tried everything that was written below, at some point the problem was solved (if right clicking on the icon -> run with graphics processor -> integrating graphics). But after a couple of days it's the same and it kills me that i have to spend so many hours on figuring how to fix this problem out of nowhere 😕 please help

[bolds33394447]

Same problem here. Since the 15.1.2 Update all preview after importing Illustrator files with images are just not happening.
Pls anyone found solution for this?